This day in 1967 was the date of the Human Be-In. It was an event held in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park Polo Fields. It was a prelude to the Summer of Love, which made the Haight-Ashbury district a symbol of American counterculture and introduced the word “psychedelic” to suburbia.
The Human Be-In focused the key ideas of the 1960s counterculture: personal empowerment, cultural and political decentralization, communal living, ecological awareness, higher consciousness (with the aid of psychedelic drugs), acceptance of illicit psychedelics use, and radical New Left political consciousness. The playful name combined humanist values with the scores of sit-ins that had been reforming college and university practices and eroding the vestiges of entrenched segregation, starting with the lunch counter sit-ins of 1960 in Greensboro, North Carolina, and Nashville, Tennessee. The first major teach-in had been organized by Students for a Democratic Society at the University of Michigan.
The speakers at the rally were all invited by Bowen, the main organizer. They included Timothy Leary in his first San Francisco appearance, who set the tone that afternoon with his famous phrase “Turn on, tune in, drop out”[8] and Richard Alpert (soon to be known as “Ram Dass”), and poets like Allen Ginsberg, who chanted mantras. Other counterculture gurus included comedian Dick Gregory, Lenore Kandel, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Jerry Rubin, and Alan Watts. Music was provided by Jefferson Airplane, Grateful Dead, Big Brother and the Holding Company, Quicksilver Messenger Service, and others. “Underground chemist” Owsley Stanley provided massive amounts of his “White Lightning” LSD, specially produced for the event.
The counterculture that surfaced at the “Human Be-In” encouraged people to “question authority” with regard to civil rights, women’s rights, and consumer rights. Underground newspapers and radio stations served as its alternative media.
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Today is the birthday, in 1948, of Tim Harris, drummer from British soul band The Foundations who scored the 1967 UK No.1 single ‘Baby Now That I’ve Found You’ and the 1969 US No.3 single ‘Build Me Up A Buttercup’. The group was the first multi-racial group to have a No.1 hit in the UK in the 1960s. Harris died in 2007. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klNean7JJdA
